185 

£ 

LS 


Is  the  Negro  Making  Good? 

Or,  Have  Fifty  Years  of  History  Vindicated 

the  Wisdom  of  Abraham  Lincoln  in 

Issuing  the  Emancipation 

Proclamation  ? 


By 
CHARLES  EDWARD  LOCKE,  D.  D. 

Author  of  "  Freedom's  Next  War  for  Humanity," 

"Eddyism,"  etc. 

Pastor  First  Methodist  Episcopal  Church, 
Los  Angeles,  California. 


Printed  for  the  Author  by 

THE  METHODIST  BOOK  CONCERN 
CINCINNATI 


Copyright,  1913,  by 
CHARLES  EDWARD  LOCKE 


AUTHOR'S  NOTE 

The  following  discussion  was  delivered  as 
an  address  to  an  enthusiastic  audience  of  sev 
eral  thousand  persons  in  Los  Angeles,  Cal. 
Because  of  multiplied  requests,  the  author  has 
consented  to  have  it  appear  in  this  form  for 
general  circulation.  The  author  has  undis 
guised  and  affectionate  interest  in  the  colored 
people  and  their  problems  and  prospects,  and 
confidently  believes  that  the  Negro  race  is  des 
tined  to  realize  the  highest  moral  and  intel 
lectual  and  spiritual  ideals. 

The  author  is  under  obligation  to  the  secre 
taries  of  the  Freedmen's  Aid  Society  of  the 
Methodist  Episcopal  Church  for  urging  the 
publication  of  this  booklet.  This  great  or 
ganization  and  similar  societies  in  other  de 
nominations  are  doing  more  than  all  other 
agencies  combined  for  the  education  and  the 
elevation  of  the  Negro. 


265453 


FOREWORD 

National  salvation,  like  the  saving  of  the 
individual,  depends  upon  the  ability  to  see  and 
rectify  mistakes.  Slavery  was  a  mistake.  The 
Emancipation  Proclamation  began  its  rectifica 
tion,  but  it  did  not  finish  it.  The  doing  of 
that  great  task  falls  to-day  on  the  sons  of  the 
freedmen,  as  well  as  on  the  former  master 
class.  Surely  if  those  who  suffered  are  doing 
their  part,  the  Nation  can  not  hesitate.  This 
brochure  attempts  to  show  that,  whatever  else 
may  be  true,  the  American  Negro  at  least  is 
doing  all  that  could  be  expected  toward  the 
final  emancipation  of  America. 

New  York  City.  W.  E.  B.  Du  Bois. 


Is  the  Negro  Making  Good  ? 


INTRODUCTION 

hurrying  years  are  bringing  us  to 
an  increasing  number  of  centennial  and  semi 
centennial  celebrations  of  important  events  in 
the  formative  period  of  our  National  life.  The 
first  day  of  January,  1913,  is  most  significant 
as  being  the  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  issuing 
of  one  of  the  greatest  proclamations  in  all  the 
romantic  and  thrilling  annals  of  liberty.  That 
providential  act  not  only  gave  freedom  to  four 
millions  of  black  people  in  America,  but  it  was 
simultaneous  with  the  freedom  of  more  than 
fifteen  millions  of  serfs  in  Russia;  and  was 
the  initial  step  which  resulted  in  the  manu 
mission  of  all  slaves  within  the  boundaries  of 
all  Christian  countries. 

Since  this  is  one  of  the  great  chapters  in 
"the  Bible  of  the  race  that  is  being  writ,"  it 
should  not  be  unprofitable  for  us  to  inquire 
whether  the  subsequent  history  of  these  fifty 
years  has  fully  vindicated  the  wisdom  of  Mr. 
Lincoln  and  his  contemporaneous  patriots. 

While  the  avowed  purpose  of  the  Civil  War 
7 


MAKING  GOOD? 


was  to  suppress  a  rebellion  and  dethrone  the 
seditious  principle  of  State  rights,  yet  it  was 
confidently  expected  by  many  patriots  in  the 
North  that  it  would  in  some  way  result  in  the 
abolition  of  the  slave  traffic  in  America. 

As  the  war  progressed,  Mr.  Lincoln  was 
repeatedly  importuned  to  take  the  initiative 
and  use  his  prerogative  in  declaring  freedom 
to  the  Negro.  He  wisely  kept  his  own  coun 
sels  and  waited  for  the  leadings  of  the  God 
of  nations.  When,  in  September,  1862,  he  was 
urged  by  a  company  of  Chicago  clergymen 
to  precipitate  his  action,  he  replied:  "I  hope 
it  will  not  be  irreverent  for  me  to  say  that, 
if  it  is  possible  that  God  would  reveal  His  will 
to  others  on  a  point  so  connected  with  my 
duty,  it  might  be  supposed  that  He  would 
reveal  it  to  me;  for  it  is  my  earnest  desire 
to  know  the  will  of  Providence  in  this  matter." 

President  Lincoln  had  secretly  registered  a 
vow  that  when  the  Confederate  army  was 
driven  out  of  Maryland  he  would  then  issue 
a  proclamation  of  emancipation  to  the  Negro. 

When  that  event  occurred,  he  called  his 
Cabinet  together  and  said  to  them,  as  he  sub 
mitted  a  draft  of  the  Proclamation  to  them  : 
"Now  I  am  going  to  fulfill  the  promise  I  made 
to  myself  and  my  God.  I  have  got  you  to 
gether  to  hear  what  I  have  written  down.  I 
do  not  wish  your  advice  about  the  main  matter, 
for  that  I  have  determined  for  myself." 
8 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

"Of  One  Blood" 

Athens  was  like  an  emerald  in  a  setting  of 
alabaster  when  Paul  stood  upon  the  flinty  plat 
form  of  Mars'  Hill  and  made  his  incomparable 
appeal  to  the  Areopagites.  True,  no  Church 
was  established  in  Athens  as  at  Philippi  and 
Corinth,  yet  an  epoch  was  turned  in  the  ro 
mantic  history  of  Greece.  The  surges  of  a 
fretted  paganism  dashed  against  the  rock  upon 
which  the  fearless  apostle  delivered  his  chal 
lenge,  but  the  restless  waves  reached  that  day 
their  highest  tide.  The  recession  of  Hellenism 
had  begun;  Solon  and  Plato  ebbing  into  his 
tory;  Moses  and  Paul  carried  by  the  flood  of 
progress  into  places  of  imperishable  power. 

Among  the  startling  propositions  of  the  ser 
mon  which  resulted  in  the  awakening  of  Dio- 
nysius  and  Damaris  was  the  statement,  "God 
hath  made  of  one  blood  all  nations  of  men" — 
a  matter  much  disputed  before  and  since  that 
eventful  day,  but  manifestly  a  doctrine  of  Holy 
Scripture.  Malachi  speaks  for  a  large  com 
pany:  "Have  we  not  all  one  Father?  Hath 
not  one  God  created  us?  Why  do  we  deal 
treacherously  every  man  against  his  brother?" 

With  malicious  persistence  efforts  have 
been  put  forth  by  materialism  to  invalidate 
Scripture  by  endeavoring  to  disprove  and  im 
pugn  the  teachings  of  the  Bible.  But  as  in 
numberless  instances  the  Bible  has  anticipated 

9 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

science,  so  in  this  case.  Because  of  striking 
physical  likenesses,  and  analogies  in  language, 
the  mental  unity  of  men,  and  the  manner  in 
which  the  peoples  of  the  earth  are  grouped, 
there  is  to-day  a  careful  scientific  deduction 
that  man  is  not  autochthonic,  but  that  all  the 
races  of  men  have  sprung  from  a  central  origin. 
For  this  position,  Agassiz  and  Hugh  Miller 
earnestly  contended;  and  Cuvier,  the  eminent 
French  ethnologist  and  founder  of  comparative 
anatomy,  says:  "We  are  fully  warranted  in 
concluding,  both  from  comparison  of  man  with 
inferior  animals,  and  by  comparing  man  with 
himself,  that  the  great  family  of  mankind 
loudly  proclaims  a  descent  from  one  common 
origin." 

Certain  ambitious  authors  and  avaricious 
publishers  are  issuing  books  to-day  in  which 
a  stupid  attempt  is  made  to  show  that  the 
Negro  is  a  beast,  and  not  created  in  the  image 
of  God ;  that  his  place  in  the  world  is  merely 
as  a  serving  animal ;  and  that  Cain's  great  sin 
consisted  in  joining  himself  in  marriage  to  a 
Negress.  An  improvident  writer  declares  he 
spent  $20,000  and  fifteen  years  in  producing 
such  a  book.  It  is,  indeed,  another  instance 
of  the  mountain  in  travail.  It  is  not  heat  and 
hot  air  that  are  needed,  but  light  and  truth. 
It  affects  to  be  a  production  harmonious  with 
and  based  upon  the  Scripture,  but  it  is  with 
lamentable  ignorance. 

10 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

The  poet  of  the  Psalms  sings,  "Ethiopia 
shall  stretch  out  her  hands  to  God !"  Quaint 
Zephaniah  prophesies,  "From  beyond  the  rivers 
of  Ethiopia  my  suppliants,  even  the  daugh 
ter  of  my  dispersed,  shall  bring  mine  offer 
ing."  Moses  married  an  Ethiopian  woman, 
and  the  Apostle  Philip  led  the  black  premier 
from  the  realm  of  Queen  Candace  into  the 
light,  and  baptized  him  in  the  name  of  Jesus 
Christ.  All  such  attacks  upon  the  Negro  race 
are  not  only  mischievous  anachronisms,  but 
they  are  unjustified  and  wicked  characteriza 
tions. 

Slavery  Introduced 

The  Negro  was  brought  to  America  by  the 
"cupidity  of  commerce"  against  his  will.  Si 
multaneously  with  the  landing  of  our  Pilgrim 
Fathers  on  Plymouth  Rock,  a  Dutch  trading 
vessel,  in  1619,  arrived  at  Jamestown,  Virginia, 
with  a  small  cargo  of  black  slaves.  Cotton 
culture  having  commenced  the  same  year, 
slavery  rapidly  extended.  Some  time  since,  in 
passing  up  the  James  River,  I  was  remarkably 
impressed  with  the  fact  that,  in  its  hurried 
rush  to  the  sea,  the  impetuous  stream  is  grind 
ing  away  at  the  banks  so  successfully  that 
already  much  of  the  site  of  Jamestown  has 
been  swept  out  of  existence.  A  strange  irony 
of  fate — as  if  the  genius  of  liberty  were  seek 
ing  for  the  effacement  of  even  the  desecrated 
ii 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

soil  on  which  mediaeval  tyranny  pressed  its 
defiling  footsteps,  and  sought  to  establish  itself 
in  this  land  of  freedom. 

In  1776  there  were  in  this  country  300,000 
slaves.  When  our  National  life  began  the 
feeling  was  strong  against  slavery.  In  1787, 
when  the  ordinance  excluded  slavery  from  the 
Northwest  Territory,  some  of  the  Southern 
States  were  even  more  enthusiastic  than  the 
Northern.  'In  1790  there  were  slaves  in  every 
Northern  State  except  Massachusetts.  In  1800 
the  number  of  slaves  had  reached  900,000. 
One  by  one  the  States  in  the  North  abolished 
slavery  by  gradual  emancipation.  In  the 
South,  however,  because  of  the  invention  of 
the  cotton  gin,  slavery  became  so  increasingly 
profitable  that  there  was  some  discussion  con 
cerning  reopening  the  slave  trade  with  Africa. 
In  1860  there  were  in  the  United  States  4,000.- 
ooo  black  people  in  bondage.  To-day  the 
Negro  population  is  about  10,000,000. 

To  us  to-day  it  seems  incredible  that  it 
>  is  scarcely  more  than  a  generation  since  Wen 
dell  Phillips  found  the  following  advertise 
ment  in  a  newspaper  published  in  the  United 
States : 

"FoR  SALE  :    A  plantation — a  library, 
^      chiefly  theological  books;  twenty-seven 
Negroes,  some  of  them  very  prime ;  two 
mules,  one  horse,  and  an  old  wagon." 

12 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

;  Steps  were  taken  toward  the  abolition  of 
slavery  as  early  as  1775.  About  this  time  the 
Pennsylvania  Abolition  Society  was  organized, 
and  it  continued  in  existence  until  the  manu 
mission.,  Washington,  Jefferson,  and  Madison 
opposed  slavery,  and  in  1790  a  memorial  was 
sent  to  Congress,  signed  by  Benjamin  Frank 
lin,  asking  that  "Means  be  devised  for  re 
moving  the  inconsistency  of  slavery."  In  1820 
the  Missouri  Compromise  was  effected.  On 
January  31,  1831,  William  Lloyd  Garrison  pub 
lished  the  first  number  of  The  Liberator,  and 
sounded  the  tocsin,  "Slavery  a  sin  against 
God — a  crime  against  humanity." 

In  1844  the  already  great  Methodist  Epis 
copal  Church  split  upon  this  inevitable  rock, 
the  Church  of  the  North  inditing  with  tears 
and  prayers  the  memorable  denunciation  of 
slavery  by  its  illustrious  founder  as  "the  sum 
of  all  villainies." 

The  Free-soil  party  was  organized  in  1848, 
and  it  sounded  its  battle-cry  all  over  the  land, 
"Free  speech,  free  press,  free  soil,  and  free 
men;"  and  later,  in  1856,  when  it  nominated 
an  impetuous  Californian  as  its  standard 
bearer,  it  added  "Fremont"  to  its  stirring 
motto.  In  1857  there  came  the  Dred  Scott 
decision  by  the  United  States  Supreme  Court, 
which  aroused  the  righteous  indignation  of  the 
entire  North.  The  Republican  party  was  or 
ganized  in  1856.  Abraham  Lincoln  was  elected 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

President  in  1860.     The  Emancipation  Procla 
mation  was  issued  January  i,  1863. 

The  Abolitionists 

It  is  inspiring  to  note  how  a  group  of  men 
began  to  appear  in  widely  separated  parts  of 
the  country  who  were  vehemently  and  un- 
qttenchably  opposed  to  slavery.  They  were 
maligned  and  persecuted  and  wounded  and 
ostracized,  and  some  were  killed,  but  still  with 
unalterable  purpose  they  persisted  in  a  power 
ful  propaganda  against  the  evil. 

The  most  fiery  and  pardonably  immoderate 
of  these  was  William  Lloyd  Garrison,  a  young 
Quaker.  In  1829  he  started  a  weekly  paper 
in  Baltimore,  in  which  he  advocated  immediate 
emancipation  as  "the  duty  of  the  master  and 
the  right  of  the  slave."  He  was  soon  con 
victed  of  libel  against  the  owner  of  an  inter 
state  slave-ship.  After  forty-nine  days  in  jail, 
he  went  to  New  England,  and  in  1831,  in 
Boston,  established  The  Liberator,  the  publi 
cation  of  which  he  continued  until  1865,  when 
it  was  considered  to  have  fulfilled  its  mission. 
He  is  said  to  have  been  the  most  violently 
despised  man  in  the  two  hemispheres.  He  was 
constantly  threatened  with  assassination,  but 
he  never  faltered.  He  said : 

"I  will  be  as  harsh  as  truth,  and  as  un 
compromising  as  justice.  On  this  subject  I 
14 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

do  not  wish  to  think  or  speak  or  write  with 
moderation.  No!  No!  Tell  a  man  whose 
house  is  on  fire  to  give  a  moderate  alarm ; 
tell  him  to  moderately  rescue  his  wife  from 
the  hands  of  the  ravisher;  tell  the  mother  to 
gradually  extricate  her  babe  from  the  fire  into 
which  it  has  fallen ;  but  urge  me  not  to  use 
moderation  in  a  cause  like  the  present.  I  am 
in  earnest.  I  will  not  equivocate.  I  will  not 
excuse.  I  will  not  retreat  a  single  inch,  and 
I  will  be  heard." 

When  Congress  declared  that  it  was  pre 
vented  by  the  National  Constitution  from  pass 
ing  laws  against  the  African  slave  trade,  this 
fearless  prophet  denounced  the  Constitution, 
in  the  words  of  Isaiah,  as  "A  covenant  with 
death  and  an  agreement  with  hell !"  He  and 
his  compeers  refused  to  vote  for  Federal  of 
ficers,  lest  by  so  doing  they  might  seem  to 
acknowledge  the  Constitution,  and  one  Fourth 
of  July  they  daringly  burned  in  effigy  this 
historic  document.  When,  in  1836,  the  Meth 
odist  General  Conference  favored  not  allowing 
the  testimony  of  a  Negro  against  a  white  per 
son,  he  denounced  that  assembly  as  "a  syna 
gogue  of  Satan"  and  "a  cage  of  unclean  birds." 

In  1835  Garrison  was  mobbed  in  Boston  by 
"Five  hundred  gentlemen  in  broadcloth  be 
cause  in  his  paper  he  was  damaging  their 
Southern  trade."  These  same  "gentlemen"  de 
stroyed  his  printing  press  and  scattered  his 
15 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

types  in  the  streets.  But  that  day  an  ex 
traordinary  event  occurred.  As  the  young  sol 
dier  and  student,  Saul  of  Tarsus,  got  his  vision 
of  duty  as  he  stood  by  and  held  the  clothes 
of  the  men  who  persecuted  the  first  Christian 
martyr,  so  on  that  day  in  Boston  a  young 
lawyer  looked  out  of  his  law-office  window  and 
saw  the  persecutors  dragging  William  Lloyd 
Garrison  along  the  streets  by  the  hair.  This 
young  man  had  in  his  veins  the  bluest  blood 
of  New  England,  but  his  manly  heart  stoutly 
resented  the  unmanly  and  shameful  manner  in 
which  Garrison  was  treated.  He  did  not  sym 
pathize  with  the  reformer,  but  he  believed  in 
fair  play  in  the  land  of  the  free. 

That  day,  with  a  heavy  heart  and  with 
some  new  glimpses  of  duty,  he  returned  to 
his  home.  His  little  invalid  wife  patiently 
awaited  the  coming  of  her  handsome,  gallant 
husband.  As  she  sat  in  her  cozy  corner  and 
he  recounted  to  her  the  tragic  scenes  of  the 
day,  she  tenderly,  but  with  tones  that  were 
confident  with  heavenly  wisdom,  putting  her 
arms  about  him,  said : 

"Wendell,  you  must  take  up  the  cause  of 
the  slave!" 

The  voice  of  his  wife  was  to  him  like 
the  voice  of  God  calling  him  to  duty ;  and 
Wendell  Phillips  did  take  up  the  cause  of  the 
slave,  and  became  the  most  renowned  and 
persuasive  orator  of  his  time — a  veritable 
16 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

Apostle  Paul  of  Freedom.  His  stirring 
speeches  were  powerful  in  their  persuasive 
logic.  He  did  not  resort  to  sarcasm  and  in 
vective,  but  with  finished  and  dignified  speech 
he  addressed  the  conscience  and  intelligence 
of  this  Nation.  Only  occasionally  did  he  em 
ploy  caustic  utterance,  as  for  instance,  when, 
during  one  of  his  great  speeches,  he  was  dis 
turbed  by  some  callow  youth  who  continually 
interrupted  him,  he  stopped  and,  pointing  to 
them,  said,  "Rotten  before  you  are  ripe." 

A  Martyr  for  Freedom 

Time  would  fail  me  to  tell  in  this  con 
nection  of  Elijah  P.  Lovejoy,  a  clergyman 
and  journalist,  who,  like  a  Peter  the  Hermit, 
aroused  all  the  Middle  West  with  his  fiery 
rebuke  of  slavery,  and  at  last  died  as  a  martyr 
at  the  hands  of  a  pro-slavery  mob  in  Alton, 
Illinois,  November  7,  1837,  at  thirty-five  years 
of  age ;  and  of  his  brother,  Owen  Lovejoy,  who 
took  up  the  ardent  labors  of  his  fallen  brother, 
and  was  afterward  a  member  of  Congress  from 
Illinois  (1857-1864). 

Then,  there  was  Gerrit  Smith  and  Charles 
Sumner  and  Gilbert  Haven  and  the  eloquent 
black  orator,  Fred  Douglass,  who  was  born  a 
slave,  and  his  sable  sister,  Sojourner  Truth. 
On  one  occasion,  when  Douglass  was  speaking 
with  discouraged  tones  to  a  great  audience, 
17 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

and  expressed  the  fear  that  slavery  might  not 
be  overthrown,  Sojourner  Truth,  who  sat  on 
the  platform,  cried  out : 

"O  Frederick,  is  God  dead?" 

O  no,  God  was  not  dead ;  and  the  cries 
of  the  suffering,  and  the  rich  blood  of  the 
martyrs,  and  the  sobbing  prayers  of  the  faith 
ful  all  went  straight  up  to  the  throne  of  the 
Eternal,  and  were  to  be  answered  when  the 
fullness  of  time  would  come  and  a  tyrannical 
Pharaoh  would  be  willing  to  let  the  people  go. 

John  Brown,  of  Ossawatomie 

Then,  there  was  the  unique  and  eccentric 
John  Brown,  who  made  his  stand,  first  in 
Kansas,  in  1856,  then  at  Harper's  Ferry  on  the 
night  of  October  16.  1859.  He  who  was  the 
John  the  Baptist  of  freedom  and  who,  on  his 
way  to  his  cruel  but  ecstatic  martyrdom, 
stopped  and  kissed  the  beautiful  baby  of  a 
grateful  Negro  mother.  If  the  dome  of  John 
Brown's  brain  had  been  as  lofty  as  his  heart's 
sympathies  were  deep,  there  would  have  been 
another  issue  to  his  contention  and  his  sacri 
fice. 

On  October  30,  1856,  at  Ossawatomie,  Kan 
sas,  John  Brown  made  his  first  stand  for  free 
dom  and  initiated  a  struggle  which  precipi 
tated  the  Civil  War  and  emancipated  the 
slaves.  That  little  battle,  in  which  there  were 
18 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

four  hundred  invaders  from  Missouri  and  only 
forty-two  Free  State  defenders,  was  one  of  the 
victorious  defeats  of  the  history  of  freedom. 
Like  the  undaunted  struggle  of  the  "embattled 
farmers"  at  Concord  bridge,  so  at  Ossawatomie 
another  shot  was  fired  which  was  heard  around 
the  world. 

John  Brown  said:  "Providence  has  made 
me  an  actor  and  slavery  an  outlaw.  A  price 
is  on  my  head,  and  what  is  life  to  me?  I 
have  a  commission  direct  from  Almighty  God 
to  act  against  slavery.  Do  not  allow  any  one 
to  say  I  acted  from  revenge.  What  I  do,  I 
do  because  of  human  liberty,  because  I  regard 
it  necessary." 

Then,  on  October  16,  1859,  there  came  the 
raid  on  the  arsenal  at  Harper's  Ferry,  John 
Brown  confidently  believing  that  as  soon  as 
he  would  make  a  stand  for  the  Negro,  and 
furnish  guns  and  ammunition,  the  slaves 
would  flock  to  his  standards ;  and  they  could 
easily  fight  their  way  to  freedom,  as  did  Spar- 
tacus  and  his  fellow  slaves  in  Rome  long  ago. 

Fred  Douglass  once  said :  "Judged  by  it 
self  alone,  the  raid  on  Harper's  Ferry  was  a 
great  crime ;  but  it  can  not  be  judged  alone. 
The  cry  that  went  up  from  the  startled  and 
terrified  inhabitants  of  Harper's  Ferry  was  but 
an  echo  of  that  other  cry  which  began  two 
centuries  before  the  man-hunter  first  set  foot 
in  the  quiet  African  villages.  The  raid  at 
19 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

Harper's  Ferry  was  contracted  for  when  the 
first  slave-ship  landed  on  these  shores." 

John  Brown  was  a  great  man  and  a  fearless 
and  sublime  hero.  His  death  was  as  heroic 
as  Socrates;  and  his  speech  in  the  courtroom 
at  his  trial,  as  Col.  T.  W.  Higginson  once  said, 
is  worthy  of  being  placed  beside  Lincoln's 
Gettysburg  address. 

From  boulevards  overlooking  Both  Nyanza, 
The  statued  bronze  shall  glitter  in  the  sun, 

With  rugged  lettering : 

"John  Brown,  of  Kansas — 
He  dared  begin;  he  lost,  but  losing  won." 

The  minister  who  officiated  at  the  funeral 
of  John  Brown,  in  company  with  William 
Lloyd  Garrison  and  Wendell  Phillips,  was 
socially  ostracized  and  compelled  to  resign  his 
Church.  But  time  is  a  just  retributor,  and  in 
his  old  age,  "Dr.  Young,  of  Groton,  Mass.," 
won  great  distinction  and  honor  because  of 
that  event. 

A  Modern  Deborah 

In  a  Connecticut  parsonage  a  baby  girl  was 
born  June  14,  1811,  who  was  destined  to  play 
an  important  part  in  the  controversy  against 
slavery.  The  atmosphere  of  that  home  of  thir 
teen  children  was  favorable  to  strong  opposi 
tion  to  the  crime  of  the  century.  The  father 
was  a  tower  of  strength,  a  stalwart  defender 
of  righteousness,  and  an  invincible  and  elo- 
20 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

quent  advocate  of  freedom.  The  mother,  a 
beautiful  and  intellectual  woman,  died  when 
the  little  girl  was  only  four  years  old;  so  the 
child  spent  much  time  in  the  company  of  her 
father,  and  strongly  imbibed  from  him  his  un 
yielding  convictions  against  the  curse  of 
slavery  and  his  affectionate  interest  in  the 
black  man. 

When  she  was  twenty-one  years  of  age 
her  father  removed  to  what  was  then  the  far 
western  city  of  Cincinnati ;  and  later  she  be 
came  the  wife  of  a  cultured  clergyman.  In 
Ohio  this  sensitive  young  woman  became 
familiar  with  the  evil  of  slavery  at  short  range. 
Over  in  Kentucky  she  saw  a  Negro  child  sold, 
and  torn  away  from  the  arms  of  the  fainting, 
moaning  mother.  Once  a  slave  woman,  with 
her  child  in  her  arms,  fleeing  for  safety,  had 
come  across  the  angry,  swollen  river  from 
Kentucky  into  Ohio,  leaping  from  cake  to  cake 
of  floating  ice. 

Then,  in  1850,  there  was  passed  the  atro 
cious  Fugitive  Slave  law,  giving  to  slave 
holders  additional  facilities  in  recovering  their 
runaway  slaves. 

All  of  these  things  deeply  stirred  the  heart 
of  this  devout  and  patriotic  young  woman,  who 
as  the  years  hurried  found  herself  surrounded 
with  her  own  family  of  children  and  faithfully 
fulfilling  all  the  many  happy  obligations  of 
the  true  wife  and  mother. 

21 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

More  than  once  she  had  expressed  a  desire 
to  write  something  which  would  make  the 
"whole  Nation  feel  what  an  accursed  thing 
slavery  is,"  and  in  this  she  was  sympathetically 
encouraged  by  her  husband,  who  knew  her 
brilliant  qualifications. 

At  length,  one  Sunday  morning  during  the 
service  of  the  holy  communion,  as  she  wor 
shipped  in  her  usual  place  at  church,  there 
flashed  upon  her  like  a  vision  the  picture  of 
the  death  of  Uncle  Tom,  a  saintly  old  slave, 
and  she  seemed  to  hear  the  cries  for  help 
which  came  from  the  suffering  Negroes,  whose 
backs  were  bleeding  under  the  blows  of  the 
cruel  slave-whip.  She  burst  into  tears ;  and 
that  afternoon,  shutting  herself  in  her  room, 
she  wrote  a  little  story  with  a  lead  pencil  on 
coarse,  brown  wrapping  paper.  Then,  with 
her  baby  on  her  knee,  she  gathered  her  chil 
dren  together  that  same  evening  and  read  the 
story  to  them.  One  of  her  two  little  boys 
sobbed  out,  "O  mamma,  slavery  is  the  most 
cruel  thing  in  the  world !" 

The  multiplied  duties  of  her  home  caused 
her  to  lay  the  story  aside,  and  she  soon  forgot 
it ;  until,  at  length,  her  husband  discovered  it. 
and  she  found  him  in  tears  over  the  brown 
wrapping  paper.  He  earnestly  advised  her  to 
make  what  she  had  written  the  climax  of  a 
serial  story. 

And  so  she  arranged  to  furnish  the  story 
22 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

to  The  National  Bra,  an  anti-slavery  paper,  pub 
lished  in  Washington.  It  was  begun  in  June, 
1851,  and  was  to  continue  three  months.  She 
was  to  furnish  her  manuscript  in  installments, 
but  the  story  developed  under  the  spell  of  her 
genius  and  was  not  finished  until  April  of  the 
following  year. 

An  Epoch-making  Story 

As  a  serial  story  it  attracted  so  much  at 
tention  that  there  was  a  strong  demand  to 
have  it  appear  in  book  form.  Accordingly,  in 
March,  1852,  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin"  was  issued, 
and  within  a  year  over  300,000  copies  were 
sold.  Its  circulation  rapidly  increased  in  this 
country,  and  over  one  million  copies  were  sold 
in  England.  It  was  translated  in  all  into 
twenty  different  languages,  there  being  twelve 
different  translations  in  the  German  alone. 

When  the  Italian  translation  appeared,  the 
pope  prohibited  its  sale — Infallible  pope,  ah 
me!  And  before  1856  it  was  dramatized  in 
twenty  different  forms  and  acted  in  every  cap 
ital  in  Europe  and  in  all  of  the  free  States  of 
America. 

People  read  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin"  and 
sobbed  and  prayed,  and  cursed  slavery.  Many 
a  man  jumped  to  his  feet  and  earnestly  de 
nounced  the  evil  and  registered  a  solemn  vow 
that  he  would  aid  in  its  overthrow. 
23 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

It  was  one  of  the  first  real  guns  that  was 
fired  against  slavery,  and  it  was  fired  by  a 
woman. 

Presses  were  kept  busy  running  night  and 
day.  It  moved  adults  to  tears,  and  it  en 
tranced  children  and  stirred  them  to  patriot 
ism.  Many  boys  read  the  story  early  in  the 
fifties  and,  ten  years  later,  quickly  and  gladly 
enlisted  to  fight  for  the  overthrow  of  slavery. 

When  some  visitors,  knowing  how  much 
occupied  Mrs.  Stowe  must  have  been  with  her 
multiplied  domestic  cares  because  of  her  family 
of  children,  and  the  duties  incident  to  a  min 
ister's  wife,  said  to  her,  "How  could  you  do 
it?"  she  reverently  replied,  "God  wrote  it!" 

And  why  may  we  not  all  believe  that  God 
wrote  it?  The  tearful  tale  passed  far  beyond 
her  original  thought.  She  did  not  know,  when 
one  installment  was  sent,  just  what  would  be 
continued  in  the  next ;  and  so,  under  the  min 
istry  of  divine  grace,  this  godly  woman  was 
used  as  a  gracious  channel  by  which  God  gave 
to  the  world  the  most  powerful,  epoch-making- 
story  of  the  century. 

How  Freedom  Found  the  Negro 

Freedom  found  the  Negro  utterly  depend 
ent,  in  a  desolated  land,  without  skill,  prop 
erty,  or  education.     It  also  found  him  with 
distorted    moral    standards.     What   could    he 
24 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

know  of  honesty  and  purity  when  he  was  ac 
customed  to  family  ties  being  cruelly  snapped 
asunder  to  suit  the  whims  of  heartless  mas 
ters;  and  when  the  beauty  and  strength  of 
his  race  were  compelled  to  disregard  all  laws 
of  modesty,  purity,  and  marriage  in  order  to 
propagate  profitable  chattels  for  their  owner? 
Of  course,  the  Negro  had  false  ideas  of  free 
dom,  and  learned  to  his  sorrow  to  stop  sing 
ing" : 

Farewell,  hard  work  wid  nebber  any  pay ; 

I'se  gwine  up  North,  where  de  white  folks  say 
It's  white  wheat  bread  and  a  dollar  a  day. 
Look  away !    Look  away ! 

Freedom  also  found  the  Negro,  through  no 
fault  of  his,  with  a  great  deal  of  Anglo-Saxon 
blood  in  his  veins.  If  the  Negro  had  not  been 
emancipated,  it  was  just  a  question  of  the  cal 
endar  until  the  blood  of  the  conquerors,  which 
had  been  pitilessly  mingled  with  his  gentler 
nature,  would  manifest  its  historic  character. 
The  Anglo-Saxon  is  an  empire-builder,  an  in 
trepid  and  imperious  and  assertive  defender 
of  his  individuality.  The  future  of  American 
history  would  have  seen  the  development  of 
some  resistless  Toussaint  L'Overture  who 
would  have  led  in  a  revolution  beside  which 
the  story  of  Haiti's  insurrection  would  have 
been  child's  play.  This  Afro-American  is  to 
day  demanding  his  rights — he  is  patient  and 
submissive,  but  he  has  numberless  friends, 
25 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

and  let  it  be  hoped  that  he  will  secure  his 
equities,  not  by  a  revolution  of  blood,  but  by 
humane  and  Christlike  evolution. 

Some  Good  Slave-holders 

In  a  discussion  like  this  it  is  not  only 
deservedly  just,  but  an  inexpressible  pleasure, 
to  pay  tribute  to  the  many  good  men  and 
true  who,  though  slave-holders,  were  upright 
and  considerate  in  all  their  dealings  with  their 
slaves.  So  much  was  this  the  case  that  many 
persons  of  the  South  were  righteously  indig 
nant  when  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin"  was  pub 
lished,  and  denied  the  truth  of  the  chief  state 
ments  of  Mrs.  Stowe's  tragic  tale  until  in 
controvertible  evidence  was  presented  in  sup 
port  of  the  main  facts  in  that  epoch-making 
story.  In  many  Southern  homes  the  slaves 
were  devotedly  loved  and  sheltered,  and  when 
freedom  was  granted,  many  begged  their  old 
masters  to  retain  them,  even  on  the  old  con 
ditions.  At  St.  Louis  Cemetery,  in  New  Or 
leans,  I  saw  that  in  not  a  few  of  the  richly 
carved  marble  tombs  some  faithful  slaves  had 
found  a  final  resting  place  side  by  side  with 
the  master  and  his  family. 

In  that  exquisitely  pathetic  little  story  of 
James  Lane  Allen,  one  reads  with  moistened 
eyes  of  the  "two  gentlemen  of  Kentucky." 
Black  Peter's  ardent  devotion  was  no  purer 
than  the  undisguised  affection  of  the  cultured 
26 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

Kentuckian  for  his  servant.  "No  one  ever  saw 
in  their  intercourse  aught  but  the  finest  cour 
tesy,  the  most  delicate  consideration.  To  be 
near  them  was  to  be  exorcised  of  evil  pas 
sions."  This  gentleman  of  Kentucky  was 
typical  of  a  large  and  honored  class.  He  pos 
sessed  "Southern  sympathies,  a  man  educated 
not  beyond  the  ideas  of  his  generation,  con 
vinced  that  slavery  was  an  evil,  yet  seeing  no 
present  way  of  removing  it,  he  had  of  all 
things  been  a  model  master.  Often  in  those 
dark  days  his  face,  anxious  and  sad,  was  to 
be  seen  amid  the  throngs  that  surrounded  the 
blocks  on  which  slaves  were  sold  at  auction ; 
and  more  than  one  poor  slave  he  had  bought 
to  save  him  from  separation  from  his  family — 
afterward  riding  far  and  near  to  find  him  a 
home  on  one  of  the  neighboring  farms." 

In  this  connection  it  must  not  be  forgotten 
that  many  a  worthy  eulogium  has  been  pro 
nounced  upon  the  faithful  Negro  nurses  who 
helped  to  nurture  the  magnificent  Southern 
citizen.  One  of  these  gentlemen,  a  business 
man  of  worth  and  distinction,  in  referring  to 
his  Negro  "Mammy,"  said  recently : 

"Yes.  You  can  not  understand  the  love  I 
bore  for  her.  To  her  I  told  my  troubles. 
When  my  father  died,  she  comforted  me. 
When  I  got  married  and  came  home  with  my 
bride,  old  Mammy  was  standing  in  the  door 
in  a  black  and  white  dress  so  clean  and 
2? 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

starched  it  would  stand  alone.  She  kissed 
my  wife's  hand,  but  she  kissed  my  face.  When 
the  baby  was  born,  she  ordered  me  to  step 
lightly,  for  'Missus'  was  asleep.  My  wife 
died.  But  when  she  was  buried,  Mammy 
leaned  on  my  arm  and  walked  to  the  funeral. 
When  it  was  over  and  I  came  from  my  room, 
she  was  holding"  the  baby.  She  died  not  long 
ago  in  my  house — and  in  my  arms.  You  can 
not  understand  how  I  feel  even  yet." 

When  the  friends  of  a  certain  centurion 
would  persuade  Jesus  that  the  brave  captain 
was  deserving  of  His  tender  attention,  they 
said  of  him,  "He  is  worthy  for  whom  He 
should  do  this!"  The  black  citizen  of  the 
Republic  has  proven  during  the  years  of  his 
emancipation  that  he  is  worthy  of  all  that 
this  generation  can  do  to  aid  him  in  acquiring 
the  position  to  which  he  is  justly  entitled. 

The  Negro's  Progress 

His  progress  justifies  the  hopes  and  prophe 
cies  of  his  liberators  and  friends.  Congress 
man  White,  a  colored  representative  from 
North  Carolina,  in  a  speech  in  Washington, 
reminded  the  Nation  that  the  Negro  is  not 
what  he  was  forty  years  ago.  Illiteracy  has 
decreased  forty-five  per  cent.  There  are  now 
3,000  lawyers  and  as  many  physicians.  His 
race  now  owns  200,000  homes  and  farms,  cov 
ering  an  area  of  38,000,000  acres,  to  the  value 
28 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

of  $750,000,000,  and  personal  property  to  the 
amount  of  many  millions  of  dollars.  They  are 
operating  as  cash  tenants  nearly  300,000  farms. 
This  black  statesman  declared,  "There  is 
plenty  of  room  at  the  top,  and  the  colored  man 
is  climbing." 

The  Negro  has  much  power  of  invention. 
Already  nearly  one  thousand  patents  have 
been  granted  to  Negroes.  The  first  Negro 
who  applied  for  a  patent  was  a  slave.  He 
was  refused,  but  it  was  afterwards  issued  in 
the  name  of  his  owner.  The  first  machine 
for  pegging  shoes  was  patented  by  a  Negro; 
and  the  fourteenth  patent  issued  by  the  Patent 
Office  after  it  began  to  number  them  was 
taken  out  by  a  Negro. 

The  Negro  has  already  made  notable 
achievements  in  music.  He  has  a  musical  soul, 
and  the  folk-music  of  the  old  plantations  and 
the  recent  eminent  careers  of  Samuel  Cole 
ridge-Taylor,  Will  Marion  Cook,  and  J.  Rosa 
mund  Johnson  justify  the  prophecy  that 
America's  greatest  musician  may  yet  be  a  col 
ored  man ;  and  the  elevator  boy,  Paul  Law 
rence  Dunbar,  has  encouraged  lyric  lovers  to 
look  toward  the  colored  people  for  some  of  the 
world's  greatest  poets. 

Like  the  witty  Irishman,  the  Negro  has  a 

fine  sense  of  humor.     I   was  stopping  for  a 

few  days,  some  years  ago,  at  the  Gait  House, 

in   Louisville,  Kentucky.     My  attention  was 

29 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

attracted  to  a  bright,  handsome  colored  boy 
who  took  the  hats  of  the  guests  as  they  en 
tered  the  dining  room.  He  possessed  the  re 
markable  facility  of  being  able  to  return  to 
each  man  his  own  hat  without  asking  any 
questions.  One  day  a  dignified  judge,  who 
was  holding  court  in  Louisville,  said  to  the 
boy,  "How  did  you  know  that  that  was  my 
hat?"  And  the  boy  answered,  "I  did  not 
know,  sir,  dat  dat  was  your  hat;  I  just  know, 
sir,  dat  dat  was  de  hat  you  gave  me  when 
you  went  into  de  dining  room !" 

Did  you  ever  hear  the  colored  man's  reason 
"why  Adam  sinned?" 

Adam  neber  had  no  "mammy" 

For  to  take  him  on  her  knee 

And  to  tell  him  what  was   right, 

And   show   him — things   he  'd 

Ought  to  see; 

I    know    down    in    my   heart 

He'd  'a'  let  dat  apple  be, 

But  Adam  neber  had  no  dear  old  "mammy/' 

Adam  neber  had  no  childhood, 

Playin'    round   de   cabin    do'— 

He    neber    had    no    pickaninny    life; 

He   started   in   a   great,   big, 

Grown-up   man,    and 

What   is    mo' — 

He  neber  had  no  right  kind  ob  a  wife. 

The  romantic  achievements  of  the  most  ex 
traordinary  colored  woman  of  our  time,  Miss 
30 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

Edmonia  Lewis,  reveals  the  latent  possibilities 
of  this  long-oppressed  people.  Miss  Lewis's 
masterpieces  in  sculpture  and  painting  have 
won  for  her  a  permanent  place  with  Harriet 
Hosmer,  Hiram  Powers,  and  W.  W.  Story. 
Her  father  was  a  Negro  servant  in  the  family 
of  a  rich  man  in  Albany,  New  York,  and  her 
mother  was  of  Negro  and  Indian  parentage. 
W.  O.  Tanner  has  won  notable  distinction  as 
a  painter  in  two  continents. 

The  Negro  possesses  an  unusual  gift  of 
oratory.  Within  recent  years  Roscoe  Conk- 
ling  Bruce  won  the  medal  in  a  debating  con 
test  between  Harvard  and  Yale,  and  was 
recognized  by  Harvard  as  her  most  gifted 
orator.  This  brilliant  young  Negro  is  the  son 
of  the  late  Ex-United  States  Senator  Blanch 
K.  Bruce.  William  Pickens,  an  Arkansas 
Negro,  has  also  won  the  prize  for  oratory 
at  Yale.  There  is  no  man  in  this  country, 
white  or  black,  who  is  more  widely  known 
and  admired  than  Professor  Booker  T.  Wash 
ington,  the  founder  of  the  Tuskegee  Institute. 
He  is  honored  as  a  scholar,  an  orator,  an 
educator,  and  a  man  of  unusual  sagacity  and 
level-headedness — one  of  the  brightest  hopes 
of  the  Negro  race  to-day.  He  was  born  a 
slave. 

There  are  scores  of  names  prominent  in 
Church  and  State  which  dislodge  every  argu 
ment  against  educational  development  of  the 
31 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

black  man.  Among  these  should  be  mentioned 
Frederick  Douglass,  Senator  Bruce  (of  Missis 
sippi),  John  M.  Langston,  Henry  Highland 
Garnett,  Marshall  W.  Taylor,  Drs.  R.  E.  Jones, 
J.  E.  Price,  J.  W.  E.  Bowen,  I.  Garland  Penn, 
Prof.  Du  Bois,  and  Bishops  Robinson,  Turner, 
Gaines,  Campbell,  and  Clinton. 

Those  choice  words  of  Dr.  Channing,  writ 
ten  long  since,  have  not  been  forgotten :  "We 
are  holding  in  bondage  one  of  the  best  races 
of  the  human  family.  The  Negro  is  among 
the  mildest  and  gentlest  of  men,  singularly 
susceptible  of  improvement,  affectionate,  easily 
touched,  and  hence  more  open  to  religious  im 
provement  than  the  white  man.  He  carries 
with  him,  more  than  we,  the  genius  of  a  meek, 
long-suffering  virtue."  Legislation  could  make 
the  Negro  free,  but  only  education  can  make 
him  a  citizen. 

A  Patriot 

The  Negro  has  been  a  worthy  factor  in  all 
the  patriotic  struggles  of  this  Republic.  He 
fought  bravely  in  the  war  of  the  Revolution, 
and  most  nobly  did  he  respond  to  General 
Jackson's  appeal  in  the  War  of  1812.  General 
Packenham's  fine  army  of  invasion,  as  it  re 
treated  forlorn  and  disastrously  defeated,  had 
reason  to  remember  the  ferocious  righting 
qualities  of  the  Negro.  After  that  historic 
and  phenomenal  victory  at  Chalmette,  General 
32 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

Jackson,  addressing  his  dusky  warriors,  said : 
"I  expected  much  from  you,  but  you  have  sur 
passed  my  hopes.  The  President  of  the  United 
States  shall  be  informed  of  your  conduct,  and 
the  voice  of  the  representatives  of  the  Amer 
ican  Nation  shall  applaud  your  valor  as  your 
general  now  praises  your  ardor."  In  the 
Mexican  War  again  the  Negro  was  conspicu 
ous  ;  and  in  the  greatest  Civil  War  in  the 
world's  history  this  black  patriot  fought,  186,- 
017  strong,  in  249  battles.  Wherever  responsi 
bilities  were  imposed  upon  him,  he  was  a 
valuable  ally  and  a  veritable  black  knight  of 
the  flag. 

The  Governor  of  Massachusetts  organized 
the  54th  Regiment  out  of  Negro  volunteers. 
He  then  went  over  to  Harvard  College  and 
invited  a  noble  young  man  to  become  its 
colonel.  At  first  he  declined,  and  later  ac 
cepted  the  trust.  The  regiment  was  assigned 
to  duty  near  the  Confederate  stronghold  of 
Fort  Wragner.  At  length  the  order  was  re 
ceived  to  storm  the  fortification.  The  gallant 
young  colonel  called  his  men  before  him,  fully 
explained  the  perilous  and  well-nigh  impossible 
task;  and  as  he  gallantly  led  the  charge,  he 
shouted  to  his  men,  "We  shall  take  that  fort 
or  die  there !"  As  one  man  that  regiment  fol 
lowed  their  brave  commander.  Up,  up  they 
went,  their  eyes  gleaming  with  courage  and 
anticipated  victory.  In  a  moment  they  would 
33 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

turn  the  guns  upon  a  retreating  garrison,  when 
suddenly  there  came  a  terrific  volcanic  erup 
tion  from  the  artillery  of  the  fort,  and  the 
indomitable  white  colonel  and  the  impetuous 
black  regiment  were  all  dead  on  the  parapets 
of  the  fort.  O,  it  was  a  merciless  slaughter 
of  consecrated  heroes !  And  there  to-day,  in 
honorable  sepulcher  on  the  slopes  of  the  hill, 
awaiting  the  bugle  of  the  judgment  morning, 
lies  the  dust  of  Colonel  Robert  Gould  Shaw, 
surrounded  by  the  men  who  with  him  won 
fadeless  immortality  in  that  victorious  defeat 
at  Fort  Wagner.  When  Emerson  heard  the 
story,  he  wrote : 

So  nigh  is  grandeur  to  our  dust, 

So   near   is    God   to   man, 
When  duty  whispers  low,  "Thou  must," 

The  youth  replies,  "I  can !" 

And  Saint  Gaudens  has  achieved  his  great 
est  masterpiece  in  his  immortal  bas-relief 
which  has  made  a  corner  of  Boston  Commons 
an  imperishable  shrine  of  American  heroism. 

Disfranchised 

The  enactment  of  certain  laws  practically 
disfranchises  the  Negro  in  many  of  the  South 
ern  States.  The  shamelessness  of  this  un- 
American  legislation  is  only  equaled  by  the 
attempt  at  justification  made  by  Southern 
writers.  It  is  claimed  that  the  reason  for  the 
34 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

disfranchisement  is  that  certain  unscrupulous 
whites  have  manipulated  the  ignorant  colored 
vote.  Would  it  not  be  more  in  harmony  with 
the  traditional  Southern  chivalry  to  visit  the 
punishment  upon  the  guilty,  unscrupulous 
white  politician — upon  the  sinner — than  upon 
those  who  are  sinned  against?  It  is  a  familiar 
problem,  which  was  settled  in  ethics  long  ago, 
that  "two  wrongs  never  make  a  right,"  and 
this  conclusion  is  as  unalterably  fixed  as  that 
two  parallel  lines  can  never  meet. 

A  Georgian  told,  in  my  hearing,  how  in 
his  town  on  election  days  hundreds  of  Negroes 
are  employed  on  plantations  or  public  works 
several  miles  from  the  voting  places,  with  the 
understanding  that  the  train  will  get  them 
home  before  the  balloting  ceased.  As  if  in 
good  faith,  an  early  start  is  always  made,  but 
when  a  few  miles  from  the  city  the  engine 
always  breaks  down  and  the  train  load  of 
black  citizens  is  delayed  until  after  six  o'clock, 
when  the  polls  close.  With  sides  shaking  with 
laughter  this  "Georgia  cracker,"  as  he  called 
himself,  repeated,  much  to  the  amusement  of 
those  who  sympathized  with  him,  "Yes,  of 
course  it  is  strange,  but  the  engine  always 
breaks  down !" 

In  response  to  this  incident,  a  young  man 

from    North    Carolina    explained    that    in    his 

State  there  was  a  law  that  all  defaced  ballots 

should  be  thrown  out  in  the  final  count,  and 

35 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

that  those  who  presided  at  the  polls  in  his 
city  furnished  to  the  Negro  voters  a  defaced 
ballot,  which  the  colored  man  unwittingly  de 
posited,  only  to  be  deprived  of  his  rights  as  a 
citizen. 

Among  the  colored  people  of  the  South  are 
already  some  brilliant  legal  minds;  and  as  the 
Negro's  head  is  developed  in  harmony  with  his 
tender  heart  and  his  giant  body,  he  will  con 
tend  logically  and  successfully  for  the  rights 
which  a  domineering  class  are  ruthlessly  tak 
ing  away  from  him. 

Social  Equality 

The  most  vexatious  element  in  this  entire 
race  problem  seems  to  be  the  ghost  of  social 
equality,  which  bobs  up  serenely  and  is 
downed,  only  to  reappear  as  imperturbable  as 
before.  That,  however,  is  an  issue  by  itself, 
and  a  wholly  personal  one.  Social  equality 
is  no  more  a  matter  of  legislation  than  in 
tellectual  equality.  To  accord  to  the  Negro 
his  political,  educational,  and  religious  privi 
leges  does  not  necessarily  involve  the  question 
of  social  relationships.  We  do  not  consider 
a  man  our  social  equal  because  he  is  white, 
neither  should  we  be  compelled  to  reject  a 
cultured  man  as  our  social  equal  because  he 
is  black.  Social  equality  in  all  classes  and 
coteries  depends  upon  taste,  culture,  affinity, 
and  environment.  If  either  the  Negro  or  the 

36 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

white  man  prefers  to  accord  to  his  own  race 
superiority  and  priority,  that  is  his  privilege 
so  long1  as  he  does  not  interfere  with  the 
rights  accorded  to  others  by  the  Constitution. 
Mr.  Lincoln  said,  referring  to  the  Declaration 
of  Independence: 

"I  think  that  the  authors  of  that  notable 
instrument  intended  to  include  all  men.  But 
they  did  not  intend  to  declare  all  men  equal 
in  all  respects.  They  did  not  mean  to  say  that 
all  were  equal  in  color,  size,  intellect,  moral 
development,  or  social  capacity.  They  denned, 
with  tolerable  distinctness,  in  what  respects 
they  did  consider  all  men  created  equal — equal, 
with  certain  inalienable  rights,  among  which 
are  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness." 

If  the  aristocracy  of  New  Orleans  crowds 
Tulane  Hall  to  listen  to  Professor  Booker  T. 
Washington  tell  of  his  theories  and  his  demon 
strations  concerning  his  colored  brethren,  and 
applauds  the  cultured  orator  to  the  echo,  and 
yet  declines  to  receive  this  colored  gentleman 
into  their  homes,  who  shall  deny  to  them  the 
right  to  choose  who  shall  be  the  recipients  of 
their  cordial  hospitality? 

If,  when  he  was  governor,  Theodore  Roose 
velt,  when  five  of  the  leading  hotels  of  Albany 
refused  to  admit  as  a  guest  Mr.  Burleigh,  the 
famous  colored  baritone  of  St.  George's 
Church,  New  York  City,  who  had  gone  to  the 
capital  to  sing  at  a  musicale;  if  the  governor, 
37 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

when  hearing  of  what  he  considered  a  gross 
indignity,  cared  to  invite  the  talented  singer 
to  be  his  guest  at  the  executive  mansion ;  and 
if,  when  President,  Roosevelt  chose  to  en 
tertain  the  foremost  representative  of  ten  mil 
lions  of  American  citizens  at  a  luncheon  at 
the  White  House  table ;  and  if  even  fastidious 
President  Arthur  invited  Mrs.  Bruce,  the  wife 
of  the  colored  senator  from  Mississippi,  to  as 
sist  at  one  of  his  New  Year  receptions,  and 
she  stood  in  the  receiving  line,  graceful,  mod 
est,  and  intellectual, — it  must  be  confessed  that 
these  are  all  matters  of  taste  and  preference, 
and  it  inheres  in  the  right  of  each  American 
to  choose  his  friends  without  interference  on 
the  part  of  any  who  may  not  agree  with  him. 
This  whole  social  controversy  has  been  en 
larged  out  of  all  proportion  by  the  persistent 
projecting  into  it  of  a  subject  that  is  not  ger 
mane.  To  render  to  the  Negro  his  Constitu 
tional  rights  does  not  and  should  not  mean 
intermarriage  and  many  other  grotesque  and 
impossible  hobgoblins  of  miscegenation. 

A  fair  chance  and  fair  play  for  every  Amer 
ican  citizen,  white  or  colored,  is  all  that  is 
demanded.  Roosevelt,  when  President,  acted 
bravely  and  promptly,  and  was  supported  by 
millions  of  citizens,  when  he  wrote  concern 
ing  the  appointment  of  Dr.  Crum,  an  edu 
cated  and  upright  colored  physician,  to  a  fed 
eral  office  in  Charleston,  S.  C. :  "I  can  not 

38 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

consent  to  take  the  position  that  the  door  of 
hope — the  door  of  opportunity — is  shut  upon 
any  man,  no  matter  how  worthy,  purely  upon 
the  ground  of  race  or  color.  Such  an  attitude 
would,  according"  to  my  convictions,  be  funda 
mentally  wrong.  It  seems  to  me  that  it  is  a 
good  thing,  from  every  viewpoint,  to  let  the 
colored  man  know  that  if  he  shows  in  marked 
degree  the  qualities  of  good  citizenship — the 
qualities  which  in  a  white  man  we  feel  are 
entitled  to  reward — then  he  will  not  be  cut 
off  from  all  hope  of  similar  reward." 

Doubtless  there  is  great  sympathy  to-day 
in  all  sections  of  our  country  with  Professor 
Booker  T.  Washington  in  his  timely  utterance 
before  the  Brooklyn  Academy  of  Science: 
"Concerning  my  own  race,  I  believe  we  shall 
make  our  most  enduring  progress  by  laying 
the  foundations  carefully,  patiently,  in  the 
ownership  of  the  soil,  the  exercise  of  habits 
of  economy,  the  saving  of  money,  the  secur 
ing  of  the  most  complete  education  of  hand 
and  head  and  heart  and  the  cultivation  of 
Christian  virtues.  I  can  not  believe,  I  will 
not  believe,  that  a  country  that  invites  into 
its  midst  every  type  of  European,  from  the 
highest  to  the  very  dregs  of  the  earth,  and 
gives  them  shelter,  protection,  and  highest 
encouragement,  will  refuse  to  accord  the  same 
protection  and  encouragement  to  her  black 
citizen." 

39 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

In  New  York,  Professor  Washington,  in 
addressing  an  audience  of  colored  people,  said : 
"Eschew  cheap  jewelry.  Quit  taking  five- 
dollar  buggy  rides  on  six  dollars  a  week. 
Do  n't  put  a  five-dollar  hat  on  a  five-cent  head. 
Get  a  bank  account.  Get  a  home  of  your 
own.  Get  some  property.  Get  a  start  in  the 
world  in  some  way.  What  good  is  it  to  you 
Northern  Negroes  that  you  live  in  cities  with 
paved  streets,  if  you  don't  own  anything? 
Do  n't  be  satisfied  with  the  shadows  of  civili 
zation;  get  some  of  the  substance  for  your 
self.  Just  as  soon  as  you  do,  you  will  be 
recognized  and  encouraged,  whether  you  are 
in  the  North  or  the  South." 

The  late  General  John  B.  Gordon,  of  the 
Confederate  army,  who  was  a  lover  of  colored 
people,  used  to  tell  this  story.  One  day  during 
the  war  General  Robt.  E.  Lee  met  a  Negro 
soldier,  and  said  to  him,  "Where  do  you  be 
long,  Sam?"  "O,  I'se  one  of  your  soldiers, 
General !"  he  replied.  "Have  you  been  shot, 
or  taken  prisoner?"  "No,  sar,"  the  Negro  an 
swered.  "Well,  I  don't  understand  that," 
said  Lee,  "for  all  my  soldiers  have  been 
wounded  or  captured."  The  Negro  rolled  his 
eyes,  and  said,  "O,  I'se  always  back  where  de 
generals  are !" 

And  the  Negro  belongs  with  the  leaders, 
and  as  he  is  becoming  educated  he  is  more 
40 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

and  more  being  recognized  among  the  men  of 
masterful  minds. 

Racial  Prejudice 

That  man  is  no  friend  of  this  Republic 
who  tries  to  arouse  racial  and  sectional  preju 
dices  and  antagonisms ;  and  whoever  seeks 
profit  and  notoriety  by  endeavoring  to  per 
petuate  differences  which  were  settled  in  the 
chivalric  struggles  of  the  Civil  War  is  a  dan 
gerous  highwayman,  and  instead  of  having  his 
bad  logic  and  dangerous  theories  exploited, 
should  be  summarily  suppressed.  In  reply 
to  the  ravings  of  such  a  mercenary  literary 
guerilla  and  demagogue  in  an  issue  of  the 
Saturday  Evening  Post,  Professor  W.  E.  Burg- 
hardt  Du  Bois,  a  distinguished  and  cultured 
colored  professor,  formerly  of  Atlanta,  now  of 
New  York,  in  a  subsequent  number  of  the 
Post  makes  this  caustic,  concise,  truthful,  and 
logical  reply: 

"The  thing  that  is  worrying  the  South  and 
the  Nation  is  that,  in  spite  of  a  tremendous 
handicap,  past  and  present,  there  is  slowly, 
steadily  arising  in  this  land  a  group  of  intelli 
gent,  thrifty,  aspiring  black  men  who  demand 
and  propose  to  have  all  the  rights  of  American 
citizens.  'How  is  this  righteous  demand  going 
to  be  met?'  is  the  question  of  the  hour  and  the 
greatest  question  before  the  American  people. 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

The  South  sends  three  answers  to  this  mighty 
question.  These  are  not  its  only  answers,  but 
they  are  the  shrillest  and  most  insistent :  Till- 
man,  the  political  answer ;  Vardaman,  the  eco 
nomic  answer;  and  Dixon,  the  social  answer. 
'Taxation  without  representation  is  democ 
racy.'  swears  Tillman,  and  stands  ready  by 
force  or  fraud  to  tear  up  the  very  foundations 
of  the  Republic  rather  than  let  an  intelligent 
black  man  vote.  'Train  niggers  to  be  serfs  and 
servants !'  shouts  Vardaman,  and  stands  ready 
to  degrade  labor  and  nullify  the  thirteenth 
amendment  rather  than  allow  any  Negro  to 
be  more  than  his  bootblack.  And  finally  comes 
Thomas  Dixon,  shrieking:  'There's  a  black 
man  who  thinks  himself  a  man,  and  is  a  man  ; 
kill  him  before  he  marries  your  daughter !' 
Fiddlesticks !  Shame  on  a  sane  Nation  for 
listening  respectfully  to  such  combinations  of 
treason,  brutality,  and  bosh !  The  Negro  race 
is  one  of  the  great  human  races.  American 
Negroes  can  not  be  colonized  in  Africa.  All 
American  citizens  can  be  free  and  equal  with 
out  danger  to  the  Republic. 

"In  physical  build  the  Negro  is  the  equal 
of  any  and  the  superior  of  most  human  races ; 
their  primitive  culture  is  the  equal  of  that  of 
any  people — Germanic,  Celtic,  or  Semitic;  their 
higher  culture  has  been  shown  in  their  contact 
with  other  nations,  just  as  in  the  case  of  the 
German,  who  remained  barbarians  until  Rome 
42 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

taught  them.  So  in  Egypt,  Ethiopia,  the  Sou 
dan,  and  North  Africa,  Negro  blood  has  given 
abundant  evidence  of  the  highest  possibilities. 
If  it  be  objected  that  these  were  not  pure 
Negroes,  it  can  be  answered,  'Where  are  the 
"pure"  Germans  or  the  "pure"  Anglo-Saxons 
or  the  "pure"  Americans?'  All  civilized  races 
are  mixed.  Again  and  again  the  beginnings  of 
great  civilizations  have  started  on  African  soil, 
and  their  failure  in  the  last  one  thousand  years 
has  been  due  to  the  same  shameful  Christian 
slave  trade  that  planted  the  'Negro  problem' 
in  America.  Even  in  European  civilization 
black  blood  has  been  prominent  from  the  day 
of  the  fabled  Negro  brother  of  Parsifal  to  the 
day  of  Poushkin  the  Russian  poet,  Dumas, 
Browning,  and  Coleridge-Taylor.  In  America 
the  industrial,  mechanical,  and  intellectual  de 
velopment  of  the  land  owes  an  inextinguishable 
debt  to  Negroes,  as  shown  by  the  careers  of 
black  laborers,  black  soldiers,  and  black  sailors, 
not  to  mention  Bannecker,  the  almanac  maker ; 
Douglass,  the  abolitionist;  Dunbar,  the  poet, 
and  our  legacy  of  music  and  fairy  tale. 

"The  Jews  are  not  assimilated,  because 
they  have  the  power  to  protect  their  daugh 
ters.  And  when  Negroes  have  in  law  and 
public  opinion  similar  power  to  guard  their 
families  from  lecherous  whites,  there  will  be 
far  less  amalgamation  than  to-day.  If  promi 
nent  Southerners,  from  Thomas  Jefferson 
43 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

down  to  some  leaders  of  to-day,  had  found 
our  black  daughters  as  unattractive  as  Mr. 
Dixon  alleges,  there  would  not  be  two  million 
mulattoes  in  the  land  as  unanswerable  wit 
nesses  to  the  truth." 

If  the  colored  man  would  come  into  his  own 
in  America,  let  him  emulate  the  white  man's 
virtues,  but  avoid  all  his  vices,  and  take  Jesus 
Christ  as  his  ideal. 

Did  you  see  what  old  Uncle  Calhoun  Web 
ster  said:  "When  I  sees  a  man  a-goin'  home 
wid  a  gallon  o'  whisky  and  a  half-pound  o' 
meat,  that 's  temperance  lecture  enough  for 
me — an'  I  sees  it  ebery  day.  An'  I  knows  dat 
everyt'ing  in  dat  man's  house  am  on  de  same 
scale — a  gallon  o'  misery  to  ebery  half-pound 
o'  comfort?" 


The  Crime  of  Lynching 

In  order  to  touch  the  entire  field  of  the 
discussion  which  this  address  is  expected  to 
provoke,  there  should  be  some  reference  to  the 
cursed  crime  of  lynching.  The  viewpoint  of 
a  typical  Southerner  was  presented  by  John 
Temple  Graves,  editor  of  the  Atlanta  Evening 
News,  at  Chautauqua,  in  August,  1903,  in  a 
characteristic  address.  He  declared  that 
Southern  chivalry  had  glorified  woman,  and 
assumed  that  lynching  was  an  expression  of 
the  Southern  fixed  purpose  to  defend  woman- 
44 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

hood.  He  said:  "Lynching  is  a  crime.  It 
is  anarchy.  It  is  riot.  It  is  a  stab  at  the  law. 
It  is  deplorable — appalling.  But  it  is  here.  It 
is  here  to  stay.  Place  here  as  the  premise 
and  postulate  of  your  reasoning  that  lynching 
will  never  hereafter  be  discontinued  in  this 
Republic  until  the  crime  which  provokes  it  is 
destroyed.  This  is  a  fact,  not  a  theory.  It 
is  not  as  it  ought  to  be,  but  it  is  as  it  is,  and 
as  it  surely  will  be."  He  not  only  speaks 
apologetically,  but  approvingly,  of  "the  mob 
as  the  highest,  strongest,  and  most  potential 
bulwark  between  the  women  of  the  South  and 
such  a  carnival  of  crime  as  would  infuriate 
the  world  and  practically  annihilate  the  Negro 
race."  The  best  answer  to  these  incendiary 
utterances  is  this  statement  from  an  editorial 
in  the  Atlanta  Constitution,  by  Mr.  Graves's  cul 
tured  neighbor,  Mr.  Clark  Howells.  He  says : 

"The  time  when  the  lynching  of  a  certain 
breed  of  brutes  could  be  winked  at,  because 
of  the  satisfaction  that  punishment  came  to 
him  quickly  and  to  the  uttermost,  has  given 
way  to  a  time  when  the  greater  peril  to  society 
is  the  mob  itself  that  does  the  work  of  venge 
ance.  Against  the  growth  of  that  evil  the 
best  sense  of  the  Nation  needs  to  combine 
and  enforce  an  adequate  protection." 

Nor  is  it  true,  as  is  assumed  by  Graves 
and  others,  that  lynching  is  for  a  "particular 
offense."  In  a  study  of  reliable  statistics,  I 
45 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

have  found  that  in  a  certain  year  there  were 
thirty  lynchings  for  murder,  nine  on  account 
of  race  prejudice,  two  for  incendiarism,  one 
for  slapping  a  child,  two  for  miscegenation, 
one  for  passing  counterfeit  money,  three  for 
attacking  white  men-,  two  for  no  cause,  one 
for  giving  testimony,  etc.  In  all  there  are 
nearly  forty  different  offenses  for  which  lynch 
ing  has  been  the  cruel  and  barbarous  punish 
ment.  And,  even  if  one  should  be  disposed  to 
palliate  the  crime  of  lynching  when  resorted 
to  as  a  protection  of  a  Nation's  precious 
womanhood,  this  means  of  merited  punishment 
should  be  abandoned  and  denounced  because  it 
is  impossible  to  confine  lynching  to  one  of 
fense..  It  develops  the  spirit  of  vengeance, 
which  leads  to  all  the  diabolism  of  the  anarch 
istic  mob.  What  was  invented  as  a  defense 
for  Southern  women  must  now  be  abandoned 
for  their  surer  protection.  As  Justice  Brewer, 
of  the  United  States  Supreme  Court,  said  in 
July,  1903,  "Every  man  who  takes  part  in  the 
burning  or  lynching  of  Negroes  is  a  murderer, 
and  should  be  so  considered  in  the  eyes  of  the 
law."  The  murderer  is  no  friend  of  law  and 
order  and  society,  and  lynching  must  be  sup 
pressed  for  our  veritable  self-preservation  as  a 
Nation;  and  Governor  Blease,  of  South  Caro 
lina,  is  not  a  safe  guide  when  he  blatantly  and 
shamefully  advocates  it. 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

Deportation  Chimerical 

Wholly  chimerical  is  the  suggestion  that 
there  should  be  a  separation  of  the  races,  and 
perhaps  a  deportation  to  Africa  or  somewhere 
else.  The  Negro  is  as  necessary  to  the  South 
as  the  South  is  necessary  to  him ;  and  as  the 
Negro  is  elevated  by  education  and  religion, 
he  will  become  more  and  more  indispensable 
to  the  North  as  well  as  to  the  South.  Con 
cerning  this  suggestion,  Professor  Du  Bois 
says: 

"To  transport  ten  million  human  beings 
from  America  to  Africa,  provide  for  the  dis 
posal  of  their  property  here,  and  a  proper  be 
ginning  there,  would  cost  at  least  $1,000,000,- 
ooo.  There  is  no  place  in  Africa  open  to 
colonization  on  such  a  scale ;  and  if  there  were, 
how  long  would  we  be  there  before  some 
body's  swaggering  battleships  would  benevo 
lently  annex  our  gold  mines?  Moreover,  we 
will  not  go  to  Africa;  we  are  Americans,  and 
right  here  in  America  we  propose  to  fight 
out  our  destiny.  I  was  born  here,  my  father 
was  born  here,  and  my  forefathers  were  honest, 
hard-working  Americans  two  hundred  years 
before  the  Dixons  were  dime-novelists.  If  Mr. 
Dixon  is  allowed  the  protection  of  the  flag  he 
fought  against,  surely  I  may  claim  the  pro 
tection  of  that  same  flag  which  my  fathers 
gave  their  blood  to  preserve  in  every  war  of 
the  Republic." 

47 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

The  Negro  will  never  go  back  to  Africa! 
He  is  here  to  stay,  and  without  immigration 
from  other  lands,  notwithstanding  the  lament 
able  ravages  of  the  ills  of  freedom,  he  is  hold 
ing  his  own  in  the  increase  of  numbers  with 
his  white  neighbors. 

The  Negro  has  as  much  right  to  America 
as  the  white  man,  and  he  will  stay  here. 

One  Negro  met  another  and  said  to  him, 
"  'Rastus,  Fse  goin'  to  die !"  "O,  no !"  said  his 
friend.  "Yes,  sir,  Fse  goin'  to  die!"  he  re 
peated.  "How  do  you  know  you  are  goin'  to 
die  ?"  "Why,  de  doctor  says  so,  and  he  knows 
what  he  's  givin*  me !" 

In  all  this  "Back  to  Africa"  nonsense  the 
colored  man  knows  what  these  quack  doctors 
are  trying  to  give  him. 

Education 

/ 
Nor  must  it  be  concluded  that  the  entire 

South  is  opposed  to  the  education  of  the  Negro. 
While  the  public  schools  of  New  Orleans  re 
fuse  to  carry  the  Negro  children  beyond  the 
sixth  grade,  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church, 
South,  has  committed  itself  to  the  higher  edu 
cation  of  the  Negro  by  the  establishing  of 
Paine  Institute  at  Augusta,  Georgia. 

A  cultured  white  woman  of  the  South, 
whose  parents  and  grandparents  were  slave 
holders,  has  recently  written,  "Whatever  the 
height  of  our  own  moral  superiority,  it  must 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

in  God's  eyes  just  measure  the  depth  of  our 
debt  to  the  weaker  race."  After  referring  to 
certain  shortcomings  in  the  Negro  character, 
she  says:  "Such  matters  should  burden  no 
one  with  a  sense  of  the  Negro's  depravity. 
They  spring  from  an  undeveloped  mental  and 
moral  consciousness.  A  few  generations  of 
reasonable  patience  and  the  Negro  will  have 
passed  this  trying  point."  These  are  golden 
words,  and  help  to  fulfill  the  claim  of  the  silver- 
tongued  Grady  that  the  best  friends  the  Negro 
has  are  in  the  South. 

The  God  of  nations  has  indissolubly  bound 
together  the  black  man  and  the  white  man  ; 
the  future  and  the  happiness  and  the  power  of 
each  is  involved,  by  a  presiding  Providence, 
in  the  well-being  of  the  other.  As  Jesus  Christ 
fell  beneath  the  weight  of  His  cross  on  His 
way  to  Calvary,  a  Cyrenian,  in  all  probability 
a  Negro,  was  seized  and  "On  him  they  laid 
the  cross  that  he  might  bear  it  after  Jesus." 
Our  age  has  laid  a  heavy  burden  upon  a  great 
portion  of  God's  children,  and  it  is  certain  that 
humanity's  King  will  not  be  unmindful  of  their 
cries  and  woes.  He  reigns  to  answer  their 
prayers,  and  to  reward  their  devotion  to  Him 
in  the  hours  of  His  unutterable  passion.  He 
has  come  into  His  Kingdom  "to  loose  the 
bands  of  wickedness,  to  undo  the  heavy  bur 
dens,  and  to  let  the  oppressed  go  free,  and  to 
break  every  yoke."  The  Resurrection  Christ, 

49 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

as  He  hears  and  fulfills  the  petitions'of  His  suf 
fering  children,  will  not  forget  the  soul-longing 
of  that  black  mother  who,  when  seeking  to 
have  her  son  admitted  into  one  of  the  Meth 
odist  schools  of  the  South,  said,  in  pleading 
tones,  "I  'se  nobody,  I  nebber  expects  to  be 
nobody,  but  I  wants  my  boy  to  be  somebody !" 

Essentially  Religious 

• 

The  Negro  is  essentially  religious — the  re 
ligious  side  of  him  is  all  sides  of  him.  There 
are  now  over  3,700,000  Negro  Church  mem 
bers,  who  are  shepherded  by  35,200  ordained 
preachers  in  35,000  church  buildings.  In  the 
35,000  Sunday  schools  there  are  1750,000 
scholars,  taught  by  210,000  Negro  teachers. 
These  Churches  give  one-half  million  dollars 
annually  to  education,  and  are  sustaining 
nearly  200  colleges,  academies,  and  industrial 
schools.  They  are  supporting  over  100  foreign 
missionary  stations  at  an  annual  expenditure 
of  $50,000. 

Professor  Washington  says  he  was  once 
traveling  through  the  black  belt  of  the  South, 
when  he  came  to  a  little  Negro  cabin,  around 
which  many  colored  children  were  playing. 
Stepping  up  to  a  woman  who  stood  in  the 
door,  he  said  to  her,  "Are  any  of  these  your 
children?" 

"Yes,  sar!"  she  replied. 
50 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

"How  many  children  have  you?" 

"Sixteen,  sar !" 

Seeing  a  baby  in  her  arms,  he  further  in 
quired,  "What  is  the  baby's  name?" 

"Judas  Iscariot!"  the  mother  replied. 

"O,  my!"  Mr.  Washington  answered,  "did 
you  not  know  that  Judas  Iscariot  was  the 
worst  man  in  the  Bible?" 

"O  yes,  sar,"  she  confidently  replied,  "I 
knows  all  about  dat,  sar.  De  Scripture  says 
it  would  have  been  better  for  Judas  Iscariot 
if  he  had  never  been  born — and  dat 's  just  de 
way  with  dis  baby !" 

Fellow  citizens,  this  Nation  has  a  God- 
given  trust.  We  must  solve  the  problem 
which  the  presence  of  our  Negro  citizens  im 
poses  upon  us.  We  of  this  age  have  inherited 
this  great  obligation,  but  the  God  of  the  races 
will  help  us  to  find  that  solution  which  will 
be  for  the  honor  of  the  white  man  and  for 
the  advantage  of  the  black  man ! 

Unpardonable  and  unjust  discrimination  is 
made  against  the  Negro  throughout  the  North 
in  his  practical  exclusion  from  the  skilled  me 
chanical  trades  on  account  of  the  color  of  his 
skin.  If  this  is  not  corrected  by  trades  unions 
it  will  not  be  many  years  until  the  Negroes 
will  form  their  own  labor  unions,  and  there 
will  be  sharp  competitions  in  this  country  be 
tween  white  and  black  skilled  workmen.  If 
the  Negro  is  treated  fairly  he  will  always  be 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

the  friend  of  the  white  man.  The  Golden  Rule, 
which  is  always  color  blind,  can  remove  this 
stubborn  obstacle  in  the  way  of  the  Negro's 
progress. 

Doing  What  Can  Not  Be  Done 

Dr.  Washington  Gladden,  in  his  "Recollec 
tions,"  says:  "If  the  main  thing  to  be  done 
for  the  Negro  is  to  keep  him  in  ignorance  and 
subjection,  that  is  a  task  which  requires  no 
great  amount  of  art — nothing  but  hard  hearts 
and  brutal  wills.  There  is  physical  force 
enough  in  the  Nation  to  hold  him  down  for 
a  while ;  how  long  that  dominion  would  last 
I  will  not  try  to  tell.  The  civilization  built 
on  that  basis  will  fall,  and  great  will  be  the 
fall  of  it. 

"The  moral  law  admonishes  us  not  to  make 
our  fellow-man  our  tool,  our  tributary.  'Thou 
shalt  treat  humanity' — it  is  Kant's  great  say 
ing — 'ever  as  an  end,  never  as  a  means  to 
thine  own  selfish  end.'  Disobey  that  law,  and 
the  consequence  falls. 

"The  stronger  race  that  tries  to  treat  the 
weaker  not  as  an  end,  but  as  a  means  to  its 
own  selfish  ends,  plucks  swift  judgment  from 
the  skies  upon  its  own  head.  On  such  a  race 
there  will  surely  fall  the  mildew  of  moral 
decay,  the  pestilence  of  social  corruption,  the 
blight  of  its  civilization.  This  is  not  Northern 
fanaticism.  It  is  a  truth  which  has  been  ut- 
52 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

tered  more  than  once,  with  the  emphasis  of 
conviction,  by  strong  men  in  the  South. 

"  'The  best  Southern  people/  says  Presi 
dent  Alderman,  of  the  University  of  Virginia, 
'are  too  wise  not  to  know  that  posterity  will 
judge  them  according  to  the  wisdom  they  use 
in  this  great  concern.  They  are  too  just  not 
to  know  that  there  is  but  one  thing  to  do  with 
a  human  being,  and  that  is  to  give  him  a 
chance/  '  Dr.  Gladden  quotes  also  the  wise 
and  noble  words  of  President  Kilgo,  of  Trinity 
College,  North  Carolina,  on  behalf  of  the 
Negro:  "He  lifts  his  dusky  face  to  the  face 
of  his  superior,  and  asks  why  he  may  not  be 
given  the  right  to  grow  as  well  as  dogs  and 
horses  and  cows.  For  a  superior  race  to  hold 
down  an  inferior  one  that  the  superior  race 
may  have  the  service  of  the  inferior  was  the 
social  doctrine  of  medievalism." 

With  a  considerable  show  of  wisdom  we 
say  that  the  Negro,  like  the  white  man,  must 
work  out  his  own  salvation ;  but  we  should 
co-operate  with  him  in  his  colossal  task.  It 
is  not  fair  to  the  Negro,  nor  is  it  any  credit 
to  the  white  man,  that  the  National  Bar  As 
sociation  has  decided  not  to  admit  Negro  law 
yers;  that  some  politicians  degenerate  into 
miserable  demagogues  in  their  treatment  of 
the  Negro ;  and  that  some  so-called  Christ'ans 
treat  the  Negro  as  if  he  had  no  soul.  Every 
man  who  is  working  out  his  own  salvation 
53 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

has  a  right  to  a  helping  hand  from  his  more 
successful  brethren. 

I  acknowledge  that  is  a  herculean  under 
taking,  but  we  must  remember  that  General 
Armstrong,  of  Hampton,  the  tried  and  true 
friend  of  the  Negro  youth,  used  to  say,  "Do 
ing  what  can  not  be  done  is  the  glory  of  liv 
ing."  Circumstances  of  civilization  may  have 
made  the  Negroes  a  backward  race,  but  the 
brilliant  present  and  the  still  more  brilliant 
future  will  demonstrate  that  they  are  not  a 
deficient  people.  An  increasingly  favorable  en 
vironment  will  show  that  the  black  man  has 
normal  capabilities  equal  to  other  more  highly 
favored  races. 

The  Negro  is  Awakening 
When  Wendell  Phillips  saw  upon  the  seal 
of  a  Southern  State  a  Negro  sleeping  upon  a 
bale  of  cotton,  he  asked,  "And  what  will  the 
people  do  when  the  Negro  wakens  up?" 

The  Negro  is  awakening — he  is  rubbing  his 
eyes ;  let  the  white  man  not  be  asleep ! 

It  is  safe  to  predict  that  this  awakening 
Hercules,  if  he  is  fairly  treated,  will  never  be 
a  menace  to  this  Republic — he  will  prove  him 
self  a  friend  tried  and  true  to  the  flag,  under 
whose  soft  folds  he  was  nursed  into  freedom. 
And  perhaps  in  some  unpropitious  future  day, 
when  foreign  foes  or  domestic  traitors  shall 
assault  the  strongholds  of  American  liberty 
54 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

and  our  citadels  of  security  shall  be  tottering 
before  a  mighty,  malicious  giant,  there  will 
march  up  from  the  bayous  and  savannahs  of 
the  Southland  a  multitudinous  army  of  black 
patriots  whose  chivalry  and  devotion  may  save 
our  Nation  in  the  hour  of  its  great  peril  and 
emergency. 

The  Negro  naturally  possesses  to  some  de 
gree  all  the  qualities  of  true  manliness.  He 
has  showrn  himself  an  orator  of  fervid  and  im 
passioned  eloquence.  He  is  a  lover  of  music, 
and  has  sung  the  chivalry  of  the  South  to 
sleep  with  his  lullabys  and  has  enchanted  the 
world  with  his  mellifluous  melodies. 

He  has  been  true  to  the  sacred  trusts  im 
posed  upon  him.  Henry  W.  Grady,  Georgia's 
most  eloquent  and  distinguished  citizen,  told 
thrillingly  of  the  Negro's  fidelity,  declaring 
that  there  is  not  an  instance  on  record  of  a 
single  black  man  violating  his  master's  trust 
during  that  long  civil  conflict  when  the  South 
ern  men  were  at  the  front  fighting  for  their 
convictions,  and  had  left  their  wives  and 
daughters  and  property  in  the  care  of  their 
trusted  servants ;  and  referring  to  his  mother, 
from  whom  he  had  to  be  separated,  he  said, 
"I  thank  God  that  she  is  safe  in  her  sanctuary, 
because  her  slaves,  sentinel  in  the  silent  cabin, 
or  guard  at  her  chamber  door,  put  a  black 
man's  loyalty  between  her  and  danger." 

Although  our  people  are  lamentably  slow 
55 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD?. 

in  giving  to  the  colored  man  his  just  recog 
nition,  and  guilty  in  some  directions  of  crim 
inal  neglect,  yet  America,  according  to  Sir 
Harry  Johnston,  of  Great  Britain,  who  has 
been  for  years  an  administrator  over  Negro 
affairs  in  Africa,  is  the  best  place  on  the  globe 
for  the  black  man. 

We  must  not  forget,  as  Dr.  J.  W.  E.  Bowen 
eloquently  says,  that  the  Negro  has  passed 
only  fifty  milestones  since  "he  walked  out 
from  slavery  with  the  chains  broken,  but  not 
off,  clanking  about  and  clinging  to  his  manly 
limbs,  his  wife  under  one  arm,  his  child  under 
the  other,  with  empty  hands,  but  with  a  buoy 
ancy  of  heart  and  a  lightness  of  tread  and  a 
freedom  from  revenge  that  made  the  world 
stop  and  wonder,  and  with  faith  in  his  God 
and  his  own  destiny,  he  went  to  work,  built 
himself  a  house,  bought  a  farm,  erected  a 
bank,  invested  in  stock,  and  through  the 
schoolhouse  and  the  power  of  the  gospel 
erected  a  family  altar,  and  is  now  making 
home,  the  fallen  sister  of  heaven,  his  paradise 
for  the  rearing  of  his  children  and  the  joy  of 
his  heart." 

His  Faith  in  God 

The  Negro  has  indeed  a  strong  intuitive 
religious  nature,  which  is  already  reaching  the 
highest  Christian  altitudes.  Their  religion 
helped  to  make  them  tractable  and  contented 

56 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

in  all  the  ordeals  and  tortures  of  slavery,  and 
is  helping  to  make  them  patient  in  the  tardy 
realizations  of  freedom. 

A  slave  mother,  who  was  forced  to  go 
before  daybreak  each  morning  to  work  in  the 
swamps,  would  leave  some  breakfast  for  her 
two  little  boys,  who  were  still  sleeping  on 
the  straw  in  a  corner.  She  would  be  gone  all 
day,  and  before  she  returned  at  night  the  tired, 
lonesome  little  fellows  would  curl  themselves 
up  in  the  straw  and  go  to  sleep.  When  she 
returned  she  would  cook  a  supper  and,  awak 
ing  the  boys,  they  would  have  their  only  meal 
together.  Then  the  mother  would  kneel  in 
prayer  with  her  arms  about  her  little  boys; 
and  she  would  pray  for  the  overthrow  of  the 
infamous  institution  of  slavery,  that  her  two 
boys  might  be  freemen,  and  have  a  chance  to 
make  a  character  in  the  world;  and  as  she 
prayed,  her  mother-tears  would  fall  like  rain 
upon  the  upturned  faces  of  her  two  sons. 
God  heard  that  mother's  prayer — and  one  of 
her  boys,  as  a  Christian  minister,  graphically 
described  this  tender  scene. 

When  Sumter  was  fired  upon,  somebody 
threatened  to  tear  down  the  Stars  and  Stripes, 
which  floated  above  a  newspaper  office  in 
Richmond.  The  old  Negro  janitor  endangered 
his  life  when  night  came  on  by  ascending  to 
the  flagstaff  and  rescuing  the  holy  symbol  of 
liberty.  He  took  it  home,  and  his  resourceful 
57 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

wife  hid  it  away  in  a  bedtick  in  their  little 
spare  room ;  and  many  a  time  during  the  long 
war  they  would  go  where  it  was  and  on  their 
knees  implore  High  Heaven  to  give  victory 
to  the  flag  and  save  the  land  from  sedition 
and  disruption. 

Dar  's  a  white  man  knockin'  at  de  cabin  do' ! 

Don'  you  let  de  white  man  in ! 
He   lookin'  mighty  weary  an'  he  lookin'  mighty  pore, 

Don'  you  let  de  white  man  in! 

He  lookin'  mighty  hungry,  an'  de  bacon  gettin'  low, 
De  meal  am  gettin'   sca'cer,   an'   de  yams   don'  grow; 
How  we  gwine  to  get  a  libin'  dis  yer  nigga'  don'  know ! 

Don'  you  let  de  white  man  in ! 

Jus*  step  up  to  de  do'  an'  tell  him  go  away, 

Don'  you  let  de  white  man  in! 
He  lookin'  mighty  weary,  an'  I  know  he  want  to  stay, 

Don*  you  let  de  white  man  in ! 
Wha'    dat    de   white    man    muttah  ?      He 's    a    Lincum 

soger  man? 
He  jus*  'scape  from   de  rebels,  an'  dey  cotch   him   if 

dey  can? 

Jes'  hurry  up  dar,  Dinah!     Get  de  bacon  in  de  pan! 
Come  in,  Lincum  soger  !     Come  in  ! 

Make  de  hoe-cake  ready !     Make  de  fiah  burn  up  high ! 

Come  in,  Lincum  soger !     Come  in  ! 
'Fo'  de  rebels  take  you  back  dis  yer  nigga'  shuah  he'll 
die! 

Come  in,  Lincum  soger !     Come  in  ! 
De  houn's  on  yo'  track?    I  can  tu'n  dem  from  de  do'! 
Jus'  pull  off  you'  shoes;  I  fool  de  pesky  houn's  bef o' ! 
I  can  lead  de  dawgs  away — dey  won't  come  back  no 
mo'! 

Come  in,  Lincum  soger !    Come  in  ! 

58 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

Jus'  clim'  up  in  de  loft  'n'  pull  de  ladder  f roo  de  hole ! 

Lay  low,  Lincum  soger  !     Lay  low  ! 
Put  de  trap-do'  down  'n'  keep  as  quiet  as  a  mole, 

Lay  low,  Lincum  soger  !     Lay  low  ! 
Now,   Dinah !    fool   de  rebels ;   say  you   dribe  de  man 

away, 
Hut  keep  dem  here  a-jawin'  jus'  as  long  as  dey  will 

stay. 

My  Lawd!  I  must  be  runnin' !    Don'  yo'  heah  de  houn's 
bay? 

Pray  ha'd,  Lincum  soger!     Pray  ha'd! 
***** 

Now,  praise  de  bressed  Lawd !   for  de  soger  man  am 
save! 

Come  down,  Lincum  soger  !     Come  down  ! 
Dis  nigga'  made  a  straight  line  for  de  wi'ches'  "Black 
hole   cave." 

Come  down,  Lincum  soger !     Come  down  ! 
I  pull  off  yo'  shoes  an'  I  drap  'm  down  de  hole, 
Den  rub  my  feet  wid  sas'fras,  an'  clim'  up  on  de  knoll, 
An'  sit  down  dere  an'  larf,  an'  mak'  my  eye-balls  roll. 

Yah-ya!  Lincum  soger,  yah-ya! 

De  houn's  came  a-bayin'  an'  dey  run  up  to  de  cave; 

Yah-ya  !  Lincum  soger,  yah-ya  ! 
De  rebels  came  a-ridin',  an'  dey  cuss  an'  sw'ar  an'  rave ; 

Yah-ya  !   Lincum  soger,  yah-ya ! 

I  tole  dem  you  jump  in,  an'  dat  yo'  goin'  down  dare  yit, 
Cayse  de  black  hole  cave,  dey  say,  am  "a  bottomless  pit." 
My!  how  de  cap'n  cuss  an'  rave!     I  thought  he  have 
a  fit! 

Yah-ya  !   Lincum  soger,  yah-ya  ! 

Make  de  hoe-cake  ready!     Make  de  nah  bu'n  up  high! 

Praise  de  Lawd,  Lincum  soger  !  Praise  de  Lawd ! 
'Fo'  de  rebels  take  you  back  dis  yer'  nigga'  shuah  he 
die! 

Praise  de  Lawd,  Lincum  soger !    Praise  de  Lawd ! 

59 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

Befo'  sun-up  I  will  lead  you  to  de  Lincum  soger  camp; 

But  we  mus'  be  movin'  airly  f  o  'ts  a  right  sma't  tramp. 

Eat  a  h'a'ty  meal,  young  soger,  for  de  night  am  cole 

an'  damp. 

He'p  yo'se'f,  Lincum  soger  !     He'p  yo'se'f  ! 

— R.  S.  TRAIN. 

Negro  Heroism 

A  few  weeks  ago,  in  Los  Angeles,  when 
the  St.  George  Hotel  was  destroyed  by  fire, 
and  the  elevator  boy  in  fright  forsook  his  post, 
Julius  Malone,  the  house  engineer,  a  respect 
able  colored  man,  rushed  to  the  elevator  and, 
notwithstanding  the  warnings  of  the  officers, 
he  ran  the  elevator  up  to  the  top  floor  and 
brought  safely  down  fifteen  frantic,  shrieking 
persons.  On  the  descent  he  saw  a  woman  with 
a  child  standing  helplessly  on  the  fifth  floor, 
and  although  the  elevator  shaft  was  now  a 
mass  of  flames,  he  insisted  upon  endeavoring 
to  rescue  them.  But  the  elevator  was  stalled 
between  the  second  and  third  floors  because 
the  motor  gave  out.  Before  he  could  extricate 
himself  he  was  mortally  burned,  and  died  a 
little  later  in  an  emergency  hospital,  and  was 
honorably  interred  yonder  in  Evergreen  Cem 
etery. 

And  does  Julius  Malone,  a  Southern  Negro, 
not  occupy  a  hero's  grave?  Was  it  not  a 
Christlike  deed?  And  will  he  not  wear  for 
ever  a  hero's  crown  and  wield  a  hero's  scepter? 
60 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

"I'll  Hit  It  Hard!" 

A  patriotic  young  man,  reared  in  poverty 
and  struggle,  made  a  trip  down  the  Mississippi 
River  as  a  deck-hand  on  a  flatboat.  When 
he  reached  the  Southern  metropolis  he  then, 
for  the  first  time,  heard  the  voice  of  an  auc 
tioneer  as  he  offered  human  beings  for  sale. 
Looking  easily  over  the  heads  of  those  about 
him,  he  could  see  the  auction  block;  and  when 
he  saw  a  beautiful  young  Negro  girl  torn 
away  from  her  mother  and  handed  over  to  a 
bestial-looking  human  brute  who  had  the 
money  to  buy  her  as  his  own,  the  young  man, 
with  his  blood  flowing  in  fiery  torrents  through 
his  veins,  withdrew  from  the  crowd  and,  lift 
ing  his  big  hand  to  heaven,  he  vehemently 
took  a  solemn  oath :  "If  I  ever  have  a  chance 
to  hit  that  thing,  I  '11  hit  it  hard ;  by  the  Eter 
nal  !" 

Let  no  man  honestly  register  a  vow  before 
High  Heaven  unless  he  is  in  earnest.  God 
heard  that  oath,  and  immediately  began  to 
prepare  and  use  that  indignant  youth  from  the 
Middle  West.  The  way  was  opened  before 
him — he  began  practicing  law — and  in  a  few 
years  he  was  an  acknowledged  statesman.  At 
length  they  were  looking  for  a  man  to  clearly 
define  the  paramount  issues  before  the  Repub 
lic.  He  was  called  to  New  York,  and  his 
memorable  utterances  at  Cooper  Institute  re^ 
61 


IS  THE  NEGRO  MAKING  GOOD? 

vealed  to  the  Nation  that  a  new  prophet  had 
arisen  to  lead  the  children  of  liberty  into  the 
Promised  Land.  Soon  he  was  the  standard 
bearer  of  a  new  party.  And  one  glad  day  he 
made  bare  his  strong  arm  to  fulfill  the  vow  of 
his  youth,  and  in  the  fear  of  the  Lord  he  dealt 
a  deadly  blow  ;  he  "hit  it  hard ;"  so  "hard"  that 
the  shackles  fell  from  four  millions  of  human 
beings ;  so  "hard"  that  an  institution  conceived 
in  hell  and  fostered  by  devils  tottered  from 
its  crumbling  foundations  and  sank  into  irre 
trievable  oblivion. 

The  recoil  of  that  masterful  blow  resulted 
in  his  own  annihilation,  and  a  broken-hearted 
and  bewildered  Nation  sobbed  at  his  bier;  but 
Abraham  Lincoln  must  live  forever  as  the 
apotheosis  of  American  manhood. 

O,  there  is  still  much  to  do!  God  would 
emancipate  all  souls  that  are  enslaved  by 
avarice,  selfishness,  vice,  and  strong  drink. 
The  call  of  duty  and  opportunity  is  heard. 
Let  us  answer  quickly  and  obey  promptly, 
and  God  will  work  other  miracles  of  liberty 
in  the  land  of  the  free  and  the  home  of  the 
brave. 


62 


U.C.  BERKE  EY  I IBRARIES 


